mutiny or gluttony?

And so yesterday, after pigging out in Binondo and while we were walking to Cartimar, we discovered the Magdalo bar and restaurant (and carwash). Now that the political grapevine is again full of rumors of another coup attempt, I wonder if the Oakwood Mutiny and the Manila Peninsula Siege were nothing but an exercise of culinary espionage? After all, why launch coups d’etat in hotels? Rumor has it that one of the mutineers escaped through the kitchen – was he stealing a recipe, or doing a quick taste test?

Dear Bishop X

When you announced the other day that Bishops do not need sex education and that you actually have your sex education program, I instantly got a hard on. There’s nothing like listening to a man of cloth explaining the birds and the bees and the miraculous babies to arouse me instantaneously.

In high school, I got bored with flip charts showing the fallopian tube, the vans deferens (duh!), and all these organs. But with bees and birds – dude, my dear Bishop, I get the point. It’s so raw that it gets me off – no need to commit premarital sex, or in my case the dreaded immoral, infernal homosexual sex – and I do get the message instantaneously: the birds shouldn’t get the bees, they should get married first and promise to each other that the bird won’t eat the bee and bee won’t sting the bird. Commitment before the stomach. See?

Significant other

From Section 10 it became Section 2.7. And so finally that morning, after a long delay, we found ourselves right in the middle of the Bureaucracy, going over a Memorandum of Agreement (“henceforth referred to as MOA”), some preambulatory clauses, pertinent provisions, and a litany of technical terms.

I was with E. and N., leaders of an organization of Filipinos with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) that has been providing support to positive Pinoys. They were about to lose their office this year due to lack of funding, and since 2006 they’ve been trying to get the Department of Health to provide a little office space in one of its facilities for free. Their appeal went through a complete bureaucratic life cycle – it was approved in principle, was referred to several public health agencies and facilities, was suddenly denied, and was being re-considered. When Akbayan heard of the case, we brought it up in a congressional hearing, finally compelling the Department of Health to see if there’s a spare room that the organization could use. It was decided that a hospital in Manila would host the organization for the meantime.

In Filipino…

Not that I haven’t gotten over with the US elections, but I just have one question: What’s ‘country first’ nga in Filipino?

And when are we going to hear about the ‘Obama-Arroyo’ regime? Tagal naman…

Obama’s victory speech

Fished this out from CNN.com.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

O-ba-ma!

This changes nothing, not here for sure.  Obama will be in White House, indeed a proof of the audacity of hope; meanwhile, in this archipelago, generals will still be carrying millions of pesos in their pockets for their junkets. Bishops will still be dictating how policies should be decided. Scams would not cease.

I have never been fond of American politics, not until this election. This has been a very moving election, and for all the gaffes and its divisiveness, it has shown what politics should be about about: it is eminently about the people exercising their sovereign will – in this case, a clear rejection of the politics that Bush represents and yes, a movement to make American politics truly color-blind. No illusions should obscure how we look at Obama – we still have to see how he is as President. But the symbolism should not be missed: to borrow a feminist metaphor, a glass ceiling had been broken today, and that alone is a cause of celebration, of exuberance.

It is tragic that Filipinos viewed this election with indifference. Are we racist enough to miss the fact that the election of the first black American President is what the American Dream is all about, a dream that is deeply ingrained in our colonial mentality? Equally tragic is that this apathy also displays how hopelessness has paralyzed us in such a way that we cannot even relate to a very moving political phenomenon. Has desperation gnawed that deep into our collective soul that we can no longer feel any sense of solidarity?

The moment CNN announced that Obama won in Florida and has enough votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency, I felt so moved. The first thing that came to my mind was a poem by Langston Hughes:

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.

A very moving election, indeed. Congrats, Obama!